R and Statistics

I’m asked from time to time for references on statistics. I’m going to start posting up some links and references in a Page (see right frame). Here’s one that I noticed which is both an excellent introduction to R and to statistics. John Verzani, Using R for Introductory Statistics The nice thing about R packages is that you can results almost instantaneously and get a feel for what’s going on. Then you’ve got some motivation for the theoretical aspects. Unfortunately, things are usually taught the other wat around. R texts have a style that I really like – with the text often being a running comentary on the programming, with actual program lines being shown in the text.

Another package that I noticed and looks nice: Grant Farnsworth, Econometrics in R, Econometrics has been far more attentive to autocorrelation issues than paleoclimate, but the data issues have a lot in common.

Steve or others – help. I would like to acquire the R program package. I used the links to find http://www.r-project.org. The instructions say that the primary download is approx 25M. My problem is that I have only dial up access with recent problems of slow speed and periodic loss of connection. Is there a volunteer willing to obtain the necessary downloads to a CD and mail it to me. I am more than willing to reimburse for time and materials.

PS. In looking for an appropriate topic, I ran across references to R scripts on climateaudit.org dealing with spurious correlation. The web addresses did not connect me to the files.

Not sure where you are but, if you have access to Kinkos, you can rent time on their broadband access PC, or use your own portable with WiFi (even cheaper if you have one) using their or any (e.g. McDonald’s) hotspot.

Download or email the file to yourself (YahooMail, Hotmail, or other). Once there, you can have the file copied to one of the Kinkos local PCs on their network for CD burning — CD Burners are typically not on the customer machines, but are on the Kinko employee machines. Or better, if you have a USB Flash-card or SD-Card, you can copy directly to that on their customer machines.

McCall, thanks for your idea. I was able Saturday to down load the R program files at Kinkos. Am now in the process of digesting the manuals preparatory to examining some of the data Steve has made available.

Yes, I have downloaded the R program. Unfortunately, I have been unsuccessful at loading data from selected tree ring archives. I was interested in the recent entries mentioned by Steve. Does anyone have R code that works for this? My numerous efforts have been for naught. The various “manuals” I have acquired note tricks at getting data into R but I invariably hit “errors” which stop progress.